My Birthday And Other Noteworthy January Occurrences

Hey, January's over! In addition to the big remodel-y projects at my mama's house, here's what we did all month: 

Dentist appts for the boys: Clyde and Will were superstars, Jack hated every second. Jack's overall temperament has improved quite a bit but his sleeping schedule leaves much to be desired, one night he wouldn't sleep unless he was draped over me, which is SUPER comfortable when you're six months pregnant. So I sent this picture (top middle) one night to get sympathy from Chuck, who was out on a Scout campout and probably deserved more sympathy, hahaha.

 Oh, Clyde started basketball and built a snowman one day. I just like the picture of Chuck picking up Willy boy from school... oh, and Chuck and I tried out Costa Vida pork salads since there's one in Nampa aaaand I have to say I prefer Cafe Rio. I know they're supposedly identical, but, alas, it just didn't do it for me.

I got a new driver's license! Chuck is economical and does the 'renewal every eight years' option, but I go every four. I just can't fathom looking that far into the future, it freaks me out. Plus I awesomely wore my hair back last time and so obviously that picture needed to be retired.

I got a black and white paper temporary license to take home that day, so here's that picture. My favorite parts are how one eye is darker than the other and how in addition to being an organ donor, I'm also a 'BRO DONOR'. Which is true. Pick any of them. All of them.

January Girls' Night:

Three January birthdays in this group, wooo!

My bday was prreetttyyy low-key this year, but the day before Chuck and I were able to sneak away for a lunch date, hooray! We started with a quick stop by the car wash before heading to Tucano's to cash in on my free birthday month meal:

This was our first time there; I'm not a huuuge carnivore (well, technically I am currently huge and also a carnivore...) but it was so delicious! And the salad bar was highly impressive. And I got a free ice cream sundae at the end, so obviously they scored high marks. Thanks to Grandma Pam for watching the boys!

And then it was my birthday! The ridiculously thoughtful Emily put the word out in our ward for people to bring me cookies for my birthday (Em and I share a serious weakness for cookies, hahaha) and several awesome people heeded the call:

Plus Em herself hooked me up with a box. Cookies make turning 29 muuuch more palatable!!

Here are some pictures from my actual birthday:

Emily will never give me cookies again after now that I've posted the shot in the bottom right, hahaha. We hired her (she does amazing work cleaning houses!!) to spend the morning in my mom's kitchen, while I worked in the dining room and I insisted on a picture before I left :). Then I went home to my sweet boys and we headed out for Clyde's basketball game. We finished up the day back at my mom's!

 Our Relief Society activity for the month was our take on the typical January New Year's Resolution-type night and it turned out SO well! We asked a few different sisters to share their thoughts on some different topics: the importance to making time for ourselves, cleaning/organizing, setting spiritual goals, developing our talents, thrifty living, and tips for eating healthily. Emily and I relied really heavily on the Spirit as we recruited women to speak and gave them minimal direction - we really wanted to see where they were inspired to go with the topics. 

It ended up being such a great mixture of spiritual and fun and uplifting and funny! and encouraging. We wrapped up the night with yummy spinach smoothies and my buddy Will (enthusiastically posing above) showing us some basic arm exercises. GREAT night, thanks to everyone who participated and especially Miss Emily for picking up so much of the slack while I was a bit overwhelmed with other things.

One of the (many!) reasons that I love Will's kindergarten teacher Mrs. Keene is that she 'assigns' a special homework project each month for the kids to complete with their families, and for January it was any kind of snowman picture. I love it because this is totally the kind of thing I should just do with my kids anyways, but sometimes you just need a little push, right?

So one Saturday we pulled out the glue and paint and got 'em done. Left to right is Jack, Clyde, Jana, Will. When Will was tracing his circles he accidentally left a little gap between the top and middle ones, so he brilliantly thought to draw the man to the left in the process of putting the head onto the body - love it.

And finally, I think all of the Zimbio quizzes going around facebook right now are hilarious. I never post my results on there, but these two in particular made me happy:

We're considering doing a family Harry Potter theme for Halloween this year, and I was Hermione back when Clyde was a baby so maybe I'll have to be Luna this go-round...

And thus concluded January, woooooo!